R_2_5_0_94 released

As you may know, Slash development for the past several years has all been in CVS, with no tarball releases. We may do a tarball at some point, but for now, we recommend installing the most recent R_ tagged code from CVS.

We tag the code with T_ for our own use (on Slashdot, slashcode.com and use.perl.org) and when we feel one of those weekly test builds is stable enough, we also slap an R_ tag on it. A complete list of tags can always be found on sourceforge.net (in the "Show files using tag" menu).

If you are running a site on a very old version of Slash pre-2.2.6, we still recommend that you upgrade to 2.2.6, but the upgrade path beyond that to a recent CVS version will be long and difficult. We recommend you research whether you want to do that.

On the other hand, if you have not already invested a lot of time into a Slash site, we strongly recommend that you begin with the most recent R_ tag.

Today we made a new R_ tag, our version of Slash from January 11, 2006: R_2_5_0_94. This is the most recent since R_2_5_0_74, which dates from June 2005.

The biggest change is CSS, which was implemented just a few weeks after _74. Other changes include reskeys (which largely replace formkeys), and public logtokens (which improve security).

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This weekend, a bugfix for R_2_5_0_94 was committed. The commit has been retagged so that a checkout of R_2_5_0_94 will give the fixed code. This is still the version that we recommend for new installs of Slash -- see previous story for details of how to install _94.

This fixes the issue that had been reported months ago that we never got around to fixing, namely, of the stray punctuation in slashschema_create.sql:

We apologize for this solution taking much, much longer than we'd initially thought. This has been a particularly persistent bug. But we are confident that when the final history of Slash 2.5 is written, it will look like just a comma.

I've been running 2.2.6 for over a year now at http://www.sportsdot.org/ [sportsdot.org] but I covet being cool and hip and running modern slash. I don't mind losing all of the UI work I've put into my current site, but I would hate to lose my users and stories. I am mighty in MySQL and Java, CVS etc -- all the skills of a developer, but weaker in PERL (though I can bend a regular expression if I need to). How realistic is it to think that I could install the latest stable, look at the new schema and the old schema, and roll my own translator (I'd use JDBC, becausds that's what I do), and make everything work? I'm guessing this would be the optimal upgrade strategy?

Has anyone had any success with installing Slashcode on hosted servers, you know, the kind where you pay a company $XX/mo. and get some space? It seems to me they'd have to be awfully nice, because several required packages need to be especially compiled for Slashcode. Or do you pretty much have to have root and exclusive access on a server to get Slashcode installed?

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